In many instances, a significant portion of total cost of operation (TCO), which in turn can be five to ten times the purchase price of the system hardware and software, is spent resolving problems or preparing for imminent problems in the system. Hence, the cost of problem determination and resolution (PDR) represents a substantial part of operational costs.
Consequently, making PDR cost effective has posed a challenge in traditional information technology (IT) environments. The IT resources being dedicated to a particular customer and his or her applications lead to a diversity of configuration among IT environments and applications that can make it challenging to programmatically reuse scripts, workflows, lessons learned from one environment to another. This heterogeneity is one aspect of the problem determination and resolution replication issue.
Existing approaches in the area of problem determination and resolution provide methodology restricted to particular products address only potential problems that have been identified in the product pre-production phase and have been categorized in error codes integrated in the product.